In
a recent radio address to the nation President Bush said, “Our economy is
strong, yet I will not be satisfied until every American who wants to work
can find a job.” If Mr. Bush truly wants to ensure that everyone who has
lost a job can get back to work, he’s going to need to take a stand
against sending jobs overseas. At best, his administration has done very
little to address this issue. At its worst, the Bush administration has
implicitly encouraged outsourcing.

The manufacturing industry has lost 2.8
million jobs since Mr. Bush took office in 2001. Although it’s difficult
to ascertain just how many of these have been outsourced, a study by the
Economic Policy Institute estimated that about 60 percent of manufacturing
jobs were sent abroad. Almost another million jobs have been lost in the
professional service and information sectors. Goldman Sachs estimated that
about 500,000 professional service and information sector jobs have been
sent overseas in recent years. Although the manufacturing industry has
been hit the hardest, job losses in the information technology (IT) sector
are a close second.

A study conducted by the University of
California at Berkeley found that about 27,000 IT jobs were outsourced to
India during just one month in 2003. The employment firm Global Insight
estimated that 104,000 IT jobs went overseas between 2000 and 2003, and
that the outsourcing of IT jobs will reduce the growth of IT employment in
America by 50 percent over the next five years. An analysis of the
computer software industry by the Economic Policy Institute concluded that
128,000 jobs in this field were outsourced between 2000 and 2004. Sending
jobs overseas is expected to increase in the coming years.

Gartner, Inc., an IT forecasting company,
predicts that ten percent of computer services and software jobs will be
outsourced by the end of this year. Another study by the Meta Group
indicated that 40 percent of corporate IT operations will be sent overseas
by 2008. Deloitte Research surveyed 100 large financial services firms and
concluded that they would send $356 billion worth of operations and
approximately two million jobs to third-world countries during the next
five years. Forrester Research expects 3.4 million jobs, totaling $136
million in wages, to be shipped overseas by 2015.

During President Bush’s first term in office
his administration viewed outsourcing as business as usual. The Economic
Report of the President in 2004 announced, “When a good or service is
produced at lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it
rather than to produce it domestically.” N. Gregory Mankiw, Chairman of
President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors, was asked to defend the
findings of the report and he stated, “Outsourcing is just a new way of
doing international trade. More things are tradable than were tradable in
the past. And that’s a good thing.” But for millions of Americans who have
lost their jobs to overseas employers, this is hardly “a good thing.”

Some policies of the Bush administration are
supportive of outsourcing. During the first three years that President
Bush was in office his administration only brought ten cases before the
World Trade Organization for violating trade rules with America. By
contrast, during the second Clinton administration, 33 cases of trade
violations were lodged with the World Trade Organization. In March of last
year a petition was filed with the Department of Labor claiming that
China’s continued suppression of workers’ wages and export prices was
violating the Trade Act. Passed by Congress in 1974, the Trade Act allows
the president to sanction a country committing unfair trade practices that
gives them an improper trade advantage. Rather than investigating the
complaint the Bush administration rejected it, maintaining that imposing
sanctions on China could lead to “economic isolationism.”

In 1974 Congress passed the Trade Adjustment
Assistance Act (TAA) to help workers who lost jobs owing to increased
imports and outsourcing. The TAA, which provides for income assistance and
job retraining skills, was renewed in 2002 due to high unemployment.
However, the Bush administration has consistently under-funded the TAA and
has purposely failed to promote it. Despite 2.8 million manufacturing jobs
having been lost since President Bush took office, few workers have been
able to take advantage of the TAA. In 2002, only 233,204 workers were
approved for assistance; in 2003, only 197,024 workers were approved.
Approvals declined even further last year, to 147,658 workers.

The Bush administration has been limiting
approval for assistance, and failing to promote the TAA, in hand with
under-funding the program. In his 2006 budget proposal President Bush cut
funding for TAA income assistance by $81 million. This was the second year
in a row that income assistance was cut. Funding for job retraining skills
was cut by $5 million, once adjusted for inflation, in the 2006 budget.

If President Bush wants to ensure that every
American has a job, he will have to alter how his administration has
viewed outsourcing. The government will have to encourage keeping jobs at
home, something it has been reluctant to do in recent years for fear of
alienating big business. It must lobby Congress to impose penalties on
companies who outsource needlessly. And the Bush administration must
provide substantial, widespread assistance to workers who have fallen
victim to outsourcing.

Gene
C. Gerard
teaches American history at a small college in suburban Dallas, and is a
contributing author to the forthcoming book Americana at War. His
previous articles have appeared in Dissident Voice, Political
Affairs Magazine, The Free Press, Intervention Magazine,
The Modern Tribune, and The Palestine Chronicle. He can be
reached at
genecgerard@comcast.net.